Crosswalks.com has an interesting op-ed piece by Albert Mohler, The 'Openness of God' and the Future of Evangelical Theology. What is open theism? As preached by several evangelical theologians such as Gregory Boyd, it argues that God's foreknowledge is limited and that He does not know the outcomes of all the choices we will make in life. Mohler sees this as an affront and a challenge to traditional Christian theology which affirms the omniscience of God. This is interesting, of course, because open theism bears distinct affinities with Mormon theology, which emphatically affirms free agency. Calvinistic determinism retained both God's role as the cause of events and His omniscience. When American Protestants repudiated determinism in favor of free will, they attempted to salvage God's omniscience by emphasizing the compatibility of foreknowledge and agency. But there is always tension--it is difficult to argue that true free agency does not compromise omniscience to some degree. "Open theism" recognizes this by expressly admitting that God lacks certain knowledge of some future events. Under this "open theology," God can be surprised.
This development makes little impact on Mormons, whose theology already downgrades God's omnipotence and transcendance, but it shocks traditional evangelicals. See, for example, this satirical list of 20 things the God of Open Theism might say, topped by "Ooops!". Or see this site for a more balanced discussion of what open theism means from a Christian perspective.
To understand why free agency and foreknowledge are deeply inconsistent, consider this hypothetical. X, a free moral agent, flips a coin. X has decided that if it is heads, he sells all he has, gives the money to the poor, and enters a monastery. If it is tails, X will instead go blow himself up in a crowded gathering of an opposing religious sect, possibly inciting civil unrest and even war. Big impact on human history. Does God know beforehand what's going to happen? No, as long as the agent is truly free and the coin flip is truly random. He is, in the language of open theism, the God of the possible rather than the traditional all-knowing God. But see this argument the two can be reconciled for a contrary view of free will and foreknowledge.
You can't get around this problem by arguing God knows how the coin would land. That was Einstein's objection to quantum mechanics ("God does not play dice"), but it is not sound. It is a probabilistic universe we live in, not a determined one. Open theism is a theology compatible with a stochastic universe.
1:14:11 PM 
|
|
